Emfuleni loses all vehicles

Emfuleni apparently defaulted on payments. Municipalities ought to know that service providers must be paid.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) understands that this includes vehicles from the traffic, water and electricity departments and fire engines and that they were repossessed by Bidvest, from whom they were leased.

OUTA believes that Emfuleni should now be dissolved.

The National Treasury regulations stipulate that service providers must be paid within 30 days of issuing an invoice. Emfuleni Municipality has also not honored its financial obligations to Eskom, Rand Water and many other service providers.

“The White Paper on Local Government and the Local Government Systems Act stress the critical importance of community and civil society involvement in the governance of municipalities, yet all interventions in collapsed municipalities exclude civil society and community representatives,” says Dr Makhosi Khoza, OUTA Executive Director responsible for the local governance programme.

OUTA calls on Minister of Cooperative Governance Zweli Mkhize, Premier David Makhura and the Gauteng and national treasuries to urgently implement Section 139, the constitutional provision that allows for the dissolution of Emfuleni municipality.

“The councillors in Emfuleni municipality have failed to fulfil their electoral mandate. Allow communities and civil society to play a part in rescuing the collapsed Emfuleni municipality,” says Khoza.

“When all is said and done, it is the communities that suffer when municipal services are not delivered or fail.”

OUTA once again calls on Minister Mkhize to afford OUTA an opportunity to meet with him to find sustainable municipal solutions. He has repeatedly ignored the community and civil society in the resolution of municipal problems.